Stephen Wallis

(On Cable TV, August 2022) It’s common enough to talk about films as being good or bad, but we less frequently discuss films in terms of competence or rather incompetence. Most movies that are released to a big audience are competent. They make the most of what they have, usually scale their ambitions to their means, and involve so many professional filmmakers working together that the union of their strengths produces something that doesn’t raise questions as to how the filmmakers got their jobs. But then there’s Defining Moments, a pretentious piece of garbage that manages to be the worst possible showcase for Burt Reynolds’ last role. Big words, I know, but here’s the paradox: Defining Moments wouldn’t have been nearly so irritating had it stuck to more modest aims. From afar, there was a lot of mileage to make out of eight characters in a small Canadian town, each undergoing their own trials and tribulations. But the script’s central mistake is to reach for some kind of universal truth, wrapping everything together in a grand cosmic statement. The writing simply isn’t up to that task—the grand pronouncements barely make sense even as they strangle themselves in pretentiousness. Worse yet—the production values of writer-director Stephen Wallis’ film are barely equal to TV movies-of-the-week romantic dramas involving a plucky young woman going from the big city to her hometown to find true love. Amateurish actors deliver their terrible lines in fake-feeling sets, portrayed using the bluntest cinematography possible and steadily irritating editing. Whatever saving graces there are here seem defeated by what surrounds them. Sure, Reynolds is as terrific as his legendary status would suggest. And then there’s Graham Greene, Sienna Guillory and Polly Shannon doing their best. But the stuff that comes out of their mouth is embarrassing: there’s nothing they could have done to improve it. The multiple subplots are intensely predictable, and so is much of the humour. The attempt to elevate all of this to a grand statement about humanity or the universe is defeated by characters that barely sound human, or filmmaking technique that seems to ignore decades of good practices. What a terrible film. Incompetent, even.